Saving New York's Neighborhood History One Interview at a Time

New York Public Library's Oral-History Project Now Focuses on Harlem

An oral-history project by the New York Public Library is collecting stories from longtime Harlem residents like Yvonne Stafford, who was recently interviewed by volunteer Kyle Ann Stokes. Photo: Jennifer Weiss for The Wall Street Journal

Kyle Ann Stokes leaned forward, her elbows propped on a table in a quiet room of the New York Public Library's 115th Street branch, as Yvonne Stafford described her colorful childhood in 1940s Harlem.

With a digital recorder sitting on the table between them, Ms. Stafford, 74 years old, recounted how her mother, a seamstress and entrepreneur, had organized dances and fashion shows in Harlem dance halls, such as the Savoy Ballroom and the Renaissance Ballroom and Casino.

"And guess who was one of the models!" Ms. Stafford said, pushing a photograph across the table.

It showed her as a girl, standing on a table in the Renaissance Ballroom in her mother's stylings: a fur coat, muff and hat, paired with red leggings and white high-top shoes.

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Yvonne Stafford, left, talks about her Harlem childhood with Kyle Ann Stokes for the New York Public Library's oral-history project.
Andrew Lamberson for The Wall Street Journal

Ms. Stokes gasped. "Wow," she said.

The exchange is now part of New York Public Library's permanent collection in an oral-history project the library is gradually introducing in neighborhoods across the city. They are training volunteers, such as Ms. Stokes, to interview longtime residents, with the goal of gathering stories about the neighborhoods as they used to be.

The library in the past has collected oral histories from veterans and from dancers, including many who grappled with the AIDS epidemic in the 1980s. Now, it is turning its attention to the city's neighborhoods and other communities.

The project began last spring in Greenwich Village. Now under way in Harlem, it will expand this fall to the Bronx and to the Andrew Heiskell Braille and Talking Book Library in Manhattan, which will gather stories from people who have experienced visual impairment, physical disabilities or dyslexia.

The New York Public Library serves Manhattan, Staten Island and the Bronx. The city's other two public library systems—Brooklyn Public Library and Queens Library—also have conducted oral-history projects.

In Brooklyn, for example, the library recorded stories about superstorm Sandy, and in the summer began gathering stories from older residents in Williamsburg, Flatbush and Sheepshead Bay.

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A soldier with his partner at Harlem's Savoy Ballroom in 1942
Associated Press

Those stories will be posted online in an interactive map, said Nick Higgins, director of outreach for the Brooklyn Public Library. Pins on the map will link to stories about those places. Twenty have been gathered so far.

The Brooklyn project, like the New York Public Library project, enlists volunteers to conduct interviews with their neighbors. "It speaks to the library's power to be that cultural and educational anchor in the neighborhood," Mr. Higgins said.

The New York Public Library's project so far has gathered 110 stories from Greenwich Village and 60 from Harlem, totaling more than 150 hours of audio. Most of those already have been posted online, and some will be available for checkout from local branches. They will also become a part of the Milstein Division of U.S. History, Local History & Genealogy, housed in the library's flagship Fifth Avenue building.

The library also plans to enlist volunteers to listen to the stories and tag them with keywords to create a searchable database. The library's experimental technology division, NYPL Labs, is developing an online tagging tool for this purpose.

Alexandra Kelly, coordinator for the New York Public Library project, said the interviewers aren't given time limits. The remembrances average about 45 minutes, although one lasted nearly three hours, she said.

The stories so far include accounts from Douglas Payne, a Harlem musician who broke out into song during his interview; Harlem restaurant owner Ruby Valdez; and Doris Diether, a longtime Greenwich Village resident who recalled working with urban-planning activist Jane Jacobs to rezone streets in the neighborhood.

Ms. Stokes, who has lived in Harlem for eight years, said she volunteered as an interviewer to learn more about the neighborhood. Ms. Stafford, too, had volunteered to conduct interviews—and then ended up on the other side of the microphone.

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